I am not English, nor Anglican, but the story of the conversion of the former Anglican bishop Michael Nazir-Ali to Catholicism struck me.
Bishop Nazir-Ali’s concerns over the trajectory taken by the Anglican Church on some key doctrinal and moral issues made him look at Rome as a much safer place to identify with. Rome’s image was perceived as being a traditional, stable, authoritative institution with an aura of doctrinal and moral integrity. The question is whether Bishop Nazir-Ali is aware of the evolutions of Roman Catholicism under the papacy of Francis, which are the result of trends stemming from Vatican II.
One example will suffice. In terms of its universalist trends, since John Paul II and even more so under Francis, Rome encourages joint prayer with Muslims given the fact that according to Vatican II they ‘along with us adore the one and merciful God’ (Lumen Gentium 16). We are ‘all brothers’ (to quote the title of the latest papal encyclical) after all, not only with Muslims but with the whole of humanity. Roman Catholicism has re-engineered the language of ‘brotherhood and sisterhood’ replacing its spiritual meaning (i.e. belonging to the same family as believers in Christ) with a biological one (i.e. belonging to the same human species). It is another way of saying that we are all children of God, we are all saved in following our different religious journeys, and we Christians no longer need to look for conversions to Christ from among people of other religions.
